Sink or Swim
by Ladybug-Jojo
Summary: We adapt, we accept, but we never get over it! I am often asked, when will the pain go away, my honest answer is never. It changes intensity, like the waves in the ocean, as we all struggle to get to Grief Beach! Alicia is in a dark place. But grief is not forever because sometimes you can heal over time. This is the story about that, the process. Read inside for more!


**_We all try to heal from Sunday night in different ways! this is mine... writing myself out of it... I know this will seem as a blow to some AW shippers because of the new love interest is a tense subject! But I for one doesn't want her stuck sad forever, and I for one prefer someone else but Peter at this point. The story will have spoilers from promo stuff and interviews! Also it is what happens in life... however this story will take you through the whole process of it. It will be heavily AW at points. But make no mistake it will end up in her moving on and letting go! however not for a long while... it will take you through her grieving process her break down and someone else noticing it. Someone else she will bond with first in friendship... I hope some of you will trust me enough as a writer to join me on this journey, and try to let me show you why grieving doesn't mean to be forever, that it will be okay for Alicia to someday move on and find love again. So yeah i beg you to trust me. Again you don't have to worry i won't start right out in her moving on, it will be a process! _**

**_(For the record I wrote this before the latest TVline spoiler!)... also it is dedicated to Terri, Steffi, Tiff and Sabrina. thank you lovely ladies for encourage me to do this! And thank you for helping me the last few days, especially you Tiff for being the Diane to my Alicia!  
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**_Warning this story is angsty and sad and will involve some very very heavy issues of different kinds... like all kinds. I hope you will trust me on this though. Have faith in me! (also for the record AP fans should stay away from this... )  
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**_I don't own the good wife if i did Will wouldn't be dead and i wouldn't write this!_**

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_Caught in the middle of a crossfire  
Lost my balance on a high wire  
Trying to figure out what to do_

_Pushed to the edge of my reason_  
_Everywhere around me it's treason_  
_I don't want to do that to you_

_Kamikaze airplanes in the sky_  
_Are we going down or will we fly?_  
_This could be a shipwreck on the shore_  
_Or we could sail away forevermore_  
_This time it's sink or swim, sink or swim_

_Hearing the song in your laughter_  
_A melody I chase after_  
_No one else has done this to me_

_Take a deep breath_  
_No more time left_  
_This is what I thought I wanted_  
_Why am I afraid?_

* * *

**Sink or Swim**

I stare at her, something is different. Something I can't put my finger on. I shouldn't notice - I would actually prefer not to notice. But her left shoulder seems a bit stiffer and she seems a bit less on the edge or angry. She has been very angry since the first time I faced her in court. She is a mystery this woman that I still carry a dead man's last message to. I haven't been able to get a chance to tell her. The first time I saw her in person was at his funeral. I hadn't been sure I had done the right thing showing up there. But it had felt like the right thing to do. After all he had spend some of his last moments alive in my lap. I had tried to push him out of the way of the bullets, and taken some myself. He had been a great opponent in court and one I had looked forward to facing again. Because of the challenge. However it wasn't meant to be, instead I had been faced with him slowly bleeding to death in my lap. As he fought to pass me one last message, hardly able to get the words out. Yet I understood them. "Te-ll Ali... Tell... Alicia I didn't... hate her... I'... ve... always lov-ed her..." I had tried to calm him down, told him he would get to tell her himself someday. But again that wasn't meant to be. I had no idea who Alicia was until the funeral, that was when I realized who she was. What it really was. That she and him was the best known but still kept silent secret in Cook County. The first lady of state, Alicia Florrick. She had worked for him, they had been lovers, they had been close, they had parted on bad terms as she left his firm, they had a thing. The rumors were humming after his death and with good reason because she looked like the walking death herself. She looked broken and hollow. A mess so to speak. I had seen her at the ceremony and she had been crying. Actually I don't think she stopped crying one moment through it. And the press seemed to be eating it up. They wrote the days after about how she had never shed a tear and had been the ice-queen herself after her husband's affair but now she was. I had wanted to go tell her there, but I had no idea how to do so. How to tell a stranger that her used-to-be lover's last words were to her. I couldn't - I wanted to but I couldn't. So I pushed it back. I didn't see her for weeks after, but I did hear rumors that cases against her had been rescheduled or replaced. That was until a month later where I walked into court and was faced with her myself. She had been different than at the funeral, much so actually. She had been cold, detached. She had also looked sleep deprived and thin but she had beaten me completely. I had been able to read the way she handled stuff that Will likely had been one of her best if not the best and closest mentor himself. The way she did I saw from my face off against him. And I knew how to handle it when I faced her the next time. I actually admired her. She was formidable. There was no doubt she was hurting, that she was in deep pain, yet she fought like a true warrior in court. However I did notice each time her frame seemed thinner and skin paler and the lines in her face deeper.

However today was different, she is less of a warrior princess and when faced with that every time I see her it is hard to escape seeing it when she suddenly isn't.

She's less ready to fight and that fact is hard to escape. Especially when I have most times seen her sword drawn high, chin up and a stare worthy of Athena.

Yet today there she had been sitting in some light blue jacket, shoulders slumped and looking stressed and tired. Like the weight of the world is on her shoulders, like her deep grief is finally catching up with her again, and she is getting closer to being back to the crying woman at the funeral.

I wish I didn't care why her chin is lowered, after all I didn't really know this woman. I had only met her in court. But somehow I feel connected, bound to her because of the damn message by Will Gardner I carry around. It was like with his last words he had made me care about this woman. Or at least made me fascinated by her. Like I wanted to know her, I wanted to see why he had loved her so much that his last words were for her. After all she is married, and from what I know had only had a brief love affair with him. And he had given her a job after 13 years of no work. And she had later left his firm and stole his clients in the process. Yet I wanted to know why he had loved her. But it wasn't just that it was her eyes, her mind, her legal logic, her strength I simply found her fascinating, and compelling. I had secretly dug up everything I could about her, not in the creepy stalker way. But as in I wanted to know, also for knowing my opponent in court. I had watched her interviews. The YouTube link to her ABA speech, videos of her husband resigning and later running again for one or the other thing. She is by far more interesting than him though. And I can't understand why someone like her hadn't left his sorry ass the moment she learned he fucked a hooker 18 times, and there was even a sex tape. But I almost wanted to know, scratch that I did want to know, I really did.

However where as she is normally all cut throat in court. Today she seems to fiddle with her papers a lot more than otherwise. She seemed out of touch with the questioning and every time I was expecting her to object during mine nothing came. Even when I make a grave error she doesn't seem to catch it. And that worries me though it shouldn't. I should celebrate but I don't feel like it at all, and I don't know why that is. Maybe because it was a cheap win, and I have never liked those. I like to work for it and win that way. So leaving court that day gives me no triumph and only a hollow feeling, it's the same as the jury's verdict comes back and it falls in my favor it still doesn't matter. Not even when my rape victim hugs me and thanks me for winning this case. Instead my glance is shifting and finding her, once again wondering what is bothering her. What it is that is makes her look a bit lost and fragile once more.

* * *

**The water over her head closed every sound of the world and her head out. It was closing her in, and it was the most at peace and relaxed she had felt in what seemed like forever. The weird feeling of it entering her ears taking away any sound, making them seem far away. And over her eyes warming her face, caressing it softly, washing stress away, only her nose above the water so she could just breath. She had always enjoyed a hot warm bath, but only lately learned to appreciate the greatness of it. Learned to appreciate the way it could instantly take the stress away at least while surrounded by the water, feeling like she was floating.**

**She felt grateful for the big bathtub, and for the break she caught with it, from her mind as well as her life. At least that was until a hand grabbed her, pulling her up from the water and making her gasp in shock, swallowing a mouthful of water with that movement. She opened her eyes in shock, annoyance and half fear as she still tried to catch her breath, only to be met with Peter's hard and shocked eyes. The words exchanged, the hard edge to yet another fight. He didn't understand her bath time or he didn't want to see what it was she was trying to escape, maybe both, after all he did know. Not that it really mattered that much. He thought she was killing herself, she wasn't. Just because she had started to like this, started to love feeling nothing but the soft touch of the water didn't mean she was killing herself. Just like the fact that she ran every morning until she could only feel her lungs burn or that she liked the oblivion of alcohol and the peace she felt as she passed out. Though the latter she had tried to cut down on after a scared Grace found her. She told him so, of course he didn't believe her and it caused more fighting, more harsh word exchanged.**

**Did they ever do anything but fight these days? She wasn't sure any longer. She actually was starting to long for the days where they had sex and nothing else, along with a bit of talk about her new firm, or his politics. The days before Will's death. At least it was easier than this fighting, this pain. She regretted agreeing to live together, to try. She knew it was better for the kids after all he had been right when he pointed out she wasn't exactly fit there. And it was true now after she had gone back to work she worked even more because it made her forget. It made her not think of the pain or the grieve and mourning. Just like her bath, runs and drinking did, it was all coping mechanisms. Yet she regretted letting Peter live with her because it meant he was there more, and because she realized he would probably never leave again. It had been done as a step to make it better between then, at least she thought so at the time, maybe. She wasn't really sure it might be that it was simply easier. However all the fighting that followed them living together again, and his comments on her throwing her life away for a dead man – she just wished it gone, wished it all gone. Well part of her wished him gone, but she had made her bed and had to lie in it. After all the road not taken didn't exist anymore, no, her Will was buried six feet under and so was the happiest she had ever been.**

**Ever since the first scandal she had often wished she and her kids lived a different life, one where sex tapes and vote faking tapes didn't hurt them. A life where her kids and her never had to wonder about ending up in the news or internet. A life where the spotlight didn't care about her or them at all but there was some other political family that was favored by it instead. That life was of course a dream and a fleeting one as that is. The reality was always much more harsh, much darker. Just like her life was these days. As Peter left the bathroom and her with a comment on how she should get dressed and he had ordered dinner, she turned to the mirror on the wall and for a second she didn't recognize the image she was faced with. She didn't recognize the woman in there, the woman she had become. When did things come to this? When did things get so bad? Or was that just another image? Another dream replacing reality? Like all of her dreams whatever it was memories of Will or nightmares of him dying. Was the hollow pale woman in the mirror just a similar dream?**

**She looked away from the mirror, unable to stand the sight in there, it didn't make sense anyway. And she was a logic person, that was what had made her able to cut all ties to where her heart once was and focus on what was needed. Just like she needed to focus now. She got dressed, casually, yet fitting and as she checked the image once again, make-up back on and covering up everything she didn't like before in the mirror, though the shadows and dark lines still seemed to shine through. The same from the clothes now clinging to her curves, she felt like she could maybe recognize herself once again. This Alicia she knew, and this Alicia she was comfortable with, unlike the other one that had confronted her in the mirror. This was the one that faced the world. This was the one that still held on even after Will died and her heart apparently ended up dead with him.**

* * *

_You recognize the look in his eyes with shock. You hadn't expected that. _

_Maybe you should have, after all everyone has always been a little bit in love with her, or captured by her. It makes you furious and jealous and it hurts, it hurts because he might have the possibility of a future with her. After all he is alive and you are not. He might have taken bullets for you and tried to save you, but he failed. You didn't expect him to end up looking at her like this next you really didn't. Not when you told him your last words. Not when you begged him to tell him what you would never get the chance to tell her in person. He still hadn't told her. Not that you blame him for that. That one you actually understand after all how do you walk up to a stranger and tell her such things. "Your ex died in my arms, and the last words he spoke was how he loved you and always had." Yeah you understand that voicing that will take time. That it will be a while before he does tell her. _

_However no matter the look in his eyes you do know he will tell her, maybe exactly because of the look in his eyes. And more because of the look in hers. That is the most painful thing. _

_You had wanted to hug her and calm her as you saw her break down at your funeral. You had wanted to take her pain away you had cursed the higher power of doing this. Of making you leave it all, leave her, leave them. Because it was also watching Diane and Kalinda break, though nothing was harder than Alicia. You worried as she drank, you worried each time she took one of those damn baths, fearing she wouldn't get up from it again. You worried as she lost weight, as she ran, as how she didn't sleep. You hated that you couldn't punch Peter in the face for how he treated her, for the things he said. After all he was still jealous. While alive you had never really known how deep that ran but you did now. He was jealous of you even after you were dead. And though you wanted her to snap out of this state too, didn't like seeing her weak you didn't want him yelling at her that way. _

_It hurt as she had given in to him and agreed to work on them. And he had moved back in. Mostly because it didn't seem to make her happy at all. She had gone back to work and you had hoped it would help her. But she had used it as an escape mechanisms instead. Just like you now watched the lack of eating, sleeping and the runs and baths. It had all come after him moving back in, maybe because she drank a bit less again. That had made you a bit relieved at first until you realized the other stuff she did. That was why you forced yourself to stay in her bedroom at night, she couldn't lose more sleep than she already did. _

_So you stayed and tried to smooth out the lines deeper than ever on her face as she slept. You tried to enter her dreams and bring the pleasant memories forward. You hadn't been here long enough yet to be able to communicate with her. To have new talks with her. So the memories the good ones was all you could give her, instead of the nightmares of blood and shootings and dead bodies you knew she had. Even having not seen it all she had the nightmares. And she woke up screaming from them. Or crying. If it was the screaming Peter woke up too and you would witness them fight again, likely followed by some attempted sex, though you left the room for that. You had no desire to watch that. You came back later as she cried herself to sleep. Tried to wipe away the tears staining her cheeks. Not that it was possible but you still tried. Just like you did if she woke up in tears. You stayed there and hoped on some level your still presence made her go back to sleep. _

_That was why that day in court though it hurt seeing the look in his eyes, you also felt a bit relieved. Relieved that someone actually did notice her hurt shoulder, noticed how she actually looked under the well applied make-up facade she put up. Because the look in Finn's eyes told you he did. Maybe by passing on your last words to this man you had in some form asked him to look after her. Look after your love, when you weren't there anymore. You hadn't thought of it as you died, but now maybe you did. It would hurt if he got to have what you never really did. But not as much as it would hurt seeing her like this always. You wanted her happy more than anything. And that was where you decided to stick around not only for her but for him as well, helping him seeing it all and do what you couldn't do anymore. Because you had never liked her weak, or in pain and that was how she was now. Maybe not in court but under the hard exterior. If Finn Polmar could get through that and help her through the pain you would be happy. You would be happy for them, for her. Because you didn't want her stuck in a memory, always sad. You wanted her to live happy and breathe. _

_So whatever it might take you would see if you could help him see the things no one but you witnessed, see what was hiding, what she was hiding. _

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_**Okay so yeah if you read this and trust me i would love a review. I get it if you don't want to but i would love response to this it isn't easy for me either. I have never cried this way over a fictional charcter. i sorbed my way through the part form Will's eyes then i wrote it. and i cried so much in the last few days it is embaressing. yet i write this because i need try to process it somehow some way... and i don't want to be stuck just like i don't want Alicia to forever be stuck in the past!**  
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